Mi'ishaen and I cleaned up, as she'd asked, and tried to encourage Seyashen to do the same. But he seemed distant- distracted- and constantly turned over his shoulder as if to check if someone was there. He never said anything about it, but every few minutes, it seemed as though he felt someone pulling on his ragged roughspun robe or tapping him on the shoulder. Morning meal was a bit awkward for the tolerant Human waitress and for us because of this, and Mi'ishaen simply waved a quiet hand when he asked to be excused. Strangely, he darted back up to his room, as though he were afraid to see the light of day.
"Wizards and warlocks," Mi'ishaen had commented as we watched him go. "They're all the same. Not entirely in control of themselves, ever. Magic is just a curse that constantly sticks its dirty, cold fingers in their brains- won't let them think their own thoughts when they want to. I think it's sad."
"Do you think, then, that all magic practitioners are doomed to go crazy?" I asked, thinking of my former master. It seemed hard to call him that, but Aleksei had seemed too disturbed at my calling him a friend for me to continue to do so. He was dead, after all- Aleksei was alive and able to be offended.
"Look at Bahlzair," Mi'ishaen replied, as though that explained everything.
It didn't, but it seemed to be all she wished to say on the topic, so I left it alone.
It turned out to be a lovely day- best for surveillance and a good day's work, Mi'ishaen had said. When I asked precisely which work she meant, the conversation, which chipped along in clips and bits, turned toward the oddly technical. She spoke of marks, vantages and systems- names and problems of which I knew nothing. I tried to learn as much as I could, but I'd be lying if I said that it was less than utterly confusing.
The brilliant, uncontested sun shone strongly as we walked into the afternoon, prompting a salty breeze to waft over the warming water and into the town. Urmlaspyr, as the guard had called it the night before, was budding with different cultures, each with its own deity propped up in different temples, but the town also crumbled in places where the shadows lurked like the remains of a nightmare in the daring face of morning. In the distance, an ominous cloud that hung over some distant hilltop temple stretched its inky embrace farther and farther over the town as the rest of the sky moved around it. Something about the shadows seemed familiar-more familiar than I would have liked them to be. The alleys and small paths between the stone houses where Mi'ishaen and I walked were darkened, as one could expect because the houses were so close together, but she did notice how easy it was for me to simply disappear into them.
Some children played in the alleys, and for all Mi'ishaen's rough and technical talk, she gladly handed a little Elven boy a ball that had accidentally struck her foot and rolled past her. The boy had accepted it from her easily, not staring at the curling horns or starting at the blood red eyes.
"Thank you, Miss," he said happily, holding out his hands as she placed it gently.
"It's alright," she replied, seeming unused to the politeness of the situation. She watched him briefly as he scampered off, and her gaze seemed to look through him, somehow- into some distant past that I was not sure that I could touch. She came to herself with the thud of a nearby door and began our previous conversation again.
"It's like getting to know the people, but not personally," she mused, almost more to herself than to me. "You learn when they leave, where they go, what they do, who they trust and love, and who they hate."
"Why would you not simply ask them?" I queried, truly curious. "Surely they would tell you all those things in appropriate conversations."
Mi'ishaen laughed quietly, as though my inability to understand this concept- casing- was somehow endearing or cute.
"I won't be able to help you, if I don't understand what it is that you do," I said quietly, concerned.
"Don't worry too much about it," Mi'ishaen replied with a shrug. "I'm working right now. Haven't you noticed that we've wound our way past this same manor house in about four different directions?"
I fixed her with a face that must have looked absolutely dumbfounded, for so I was. I hadn't noticed at all, and merely thought to myself that there were many houses that looked very similar.
"The trouble with it is, it's guarded. So I'll need to get a little bit more specific- see if the guards change shifts, if they live in the manor- things like that. The best way to get that done is to apply for a job."
"But wouldn't that draw attention to you when things go missing?" I asked, looking at the impressive stone steps flanked by purple and silver clad guards.
"That would only happen if I actually got the job, which I won't," Mi'ishaen assured me. "It's a rare place that will hire a Tiefling to protect anything from anyone. On top of it, mention the magic problem of pregnancy, and it'll be the perfect failure. No one hires anyone in the family way to be put in the way of danger."
I nodded, accepting that she was probably right. We walked a little ways away from the manor in silence, and I was not sure if we were both just enjoying the day at last, or if Mi'ishaen was continuing to think of something or other. I decided to enjoy the day for both of us, just in case.
"I know you're concerned about being able to help me, but this I'll have to do on my own," she said, turning to face me in a tight alley and placing both her hands on my shoulders. I bit my lips, not sure how appropriate it would be to admit how much this simple touch thrilled me. "Go on into the market with the gold that we still have, and see if you can find yourself a dress that wasn't once part of someone's uniform."
"Why should I buy myself another dress when you must content yourself with the same armor every day?" I dared to ask, although the words came so softly that I knew she would disapprove. Surprisingly enough, a half-smirk pulled at her face.
"I haven't worn a dress since I was a very small child, Silveredge," she said, somehow trying to comfort me with this saddening fact. "It's only a few slices; the whole armor's not spoiled."
"And someone constantly in armor can be in the family way?" I asked in a voice hardly able to be heard.
"Don't worry," is all she said before she turned back up the alley, leaving me behind.
I stood still as a stone, met for only the second time in my life with the need to choose for myself what I would do with my time. It seemed an odd thing to think of, "my time," as though time were a tangible thing that anyone could ever own. But I suppose the question of who owned something that could never be owned only arose when there was no one else telling one that it belonged to them without question. I figured it would be a good idea to make some money the proper way- or the only proper way I was really sure of, anyway- and so tried to find my way to the market center.
In most towns and cities, the wider and better paved that the road is, the closer you are to the common market. I don't know when in my life I decided that this was true, for it was not always so in the Sunderhope Commune in the Darkreach Mountains, where I spent much of my young life. There, most of the roads were paved, whether inhabitants actually used them or not. One could not be sure if it were the government actually doing what they were supposed to do for a change, or simply bored Plaguechanged, departed souls and Shadow creatures who sat to arrange stones for a while, unknowingly making things just slightly more tolerable in a world that Shar had eagerly created and then forsaken so long ago that it was beyond telling.
But I missed Sunderhope sometimes.
One never had to ask anyone to spar with them. There was a shared realization that without challenge, without constant struggle, the perpetual shadow would burn itself into the soul, which could never be reclaimed, once lost.
I suppose I thought of what I still considered home too loudly, trailing my fingers on the outsides of the houses just to feel the stones. I turned a corner to suddenly find myself face to face with a dull-grey skinned Shadar-Kai male, hair completely gone- though, judging from his thin brows, it must have been brilliant blond- and shocking ice blue eyes. He was clad in a loose fitting black robe with beautiful blue detail work that delicately kissed the hems at his feet, his wrists, and his neck. A more familiar illustration, thin and branching, was tattooed on the right side of his face- branching, thorned, blood-red vines that started, I knew, at the nape of his neck, and reached up the right side of his face like the mark of a wicked disease. He, being much less afraid of me than I instantly was of him, smiled at me. When I could not muster a similar facial expression, he reached out and touched my face, sending waves of terror- which I'm sure he didn't mean to cause- rippling through me.
"Let calm fill you," he whispered calmly to me, sensing my fear- or perhaps simply listening to my fluttering heart, which was beating loud enough to be heard clearly in the Shadowfell.
"Máistir," I replied, beginning to drop into a kneel.
"Too long have the tiarnaí daor crushed you," he sighed with bitter realization. "I forget, sometimes, that I still have the mark. Even what I say- but I am no- master. At least not yours." He let me go, but not entirely willingly. "Forgive me, my sister. I did not intend to make you fear."
"Forgive-?" I began, feeling as though I had somehow been sucked into some other strange world.
"If you can find it in your heart, yes," the male nodded. "As I said, I forget- I suppose I let myself forget what that life was like. The ease with which I had my every command, my every desire and dream, fulfilled- needles? Vermin? Acid?"
I blinked at him, understanding only that he required an answer. "Baked leather strips. I put them in the fires myself, with my own hands, and if they were not hot enough to smoke when I was slapped with them, I was made to go back to the oven and put them in again until they did. And then I bathed in vinegar at night- without crying even once, in eight years."
For a moment, it seemed as though he would turn away from me, but he simply crossed his arms over his chest and sighed deeply. "But you are here, on the Material Plane, now. You escaped?"
"No, Ides Ashok-pir-Raz left, and took me with him," I replied. "He is dead, and I- follow another."
"The name means little to me now," he admitted slowly, after some thought. "A distant bell tolls, but... I have spent quite a long time trying to erase the memory of the families for whom I- broke slaves. You at least follow this other of your own free will?"
"Yes," I replied brightly. "She forbade me to even think of her as máistir."
And much as Bahlzair had done before, this male chuckled and shook his head. "A command that you follow with that same trained obedience. Obedience forced upon you by scalding leather straps and nightly vinegar baths-"
"My lord did not do these things," I comforted tremblingly, knowing that the saying was important. "You have taken some other path. You are here, on the Material Plane, as well. Things are different here."
"Indeed they are," the male replied, uncrossing his arms self-consciously. "Forgive me- even in my stance, I am again as I was trained, and you- it seems we cannot completely escape those days. But we can forge a new future here, as you have implied. I am Yrel Svaentok-pir-Ades- if the family name means nothing more than tyranny to you, I understand. What shall I call you?"
"Ceubel Jyklihaimra-pas-Naja," I smiled meekly. "Or Silverhag-pas-Naja, or Silveredge. I'll answer to any of them."
"Smacks of Drow-tongue," Svaentok commented thoughtfully. "And to hear Ceubel's name- but I'll speak no more of the past. Come, walk where you wish, and I will follow you."
"I was trying to find the center market, but I have only been here a short while, and so am not sure where that may be," I replied, feeling foolish for having to say so. A firm first finger under my chin made me realize that I'd slowly been casting my gaze downward until I no longer looked at Svaentok at all, but instead was only raising my head enough to acknowledge that he was speaking to me.
"Just past this third house, you must turn left and then turn right at the temple of Correlon-Larethian. The market is only a few steps farther from there," Svaentok responded happily. "I can walk with you, if you wish it."
With a silent and small nod, I began to move past him, and he turned to accompany me. We only walked a few paces in silence before he asked a strange question.
"Do you still follow the path of Shar, or have you chosen some other way?"
I stopped walking, having just turned left, and contemplated the question. "I myself have not chosen to worship any god," I admitted at last. "My mother honored both Sehanine pas-Selune and Mystra pas-Mystryl when she felt she owed one of them a debt of some sort, and her good friend worshiped Lloth only when she feared that goddess might have become angry with her, but Ashok did not consider gods necessary, and did not worship any at all."
"And what about you?" Svaentok asked after a pause. I knew he had turned to look directly at me, but I was slow to do the same. Before I figured that I must, a familiar voice surprised me.
"What kind of manners is that, to ask someone that could have once been your property what her beliefs are?" Do you think that any of your business?"
And there Mi'ishaen was, behind us, her arms crossed and the tip of her tail twitching behind her, looking for all the world like a jealous mate.
"I don't believe we've met," Svaentok commented breathlessly, much more surprised to see her than I was.
"And we won't," she scoffed, not moving an inch. "Not amicably anyway, so long as I'm convinced that you're going to shuffle her off into a cult."
"My lord had only just-" I began to try to explain.
"No, no, make no excuses on my behalf," Svaentok nodded firmly. "She is justifiably concerned about a former slaver speaking with a former slave of what has past, and of religions."
"And I," managed a soldier who clanked up behind Mi'ishaen with gasps, "am concerned about a supposedly pregnant Tiefling murdering the captain of the guard last night."
And all of us found that we were beyond words.
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